Complete families of indecomposable non-simple abelian varieties

Abstract

Given a fixed product of non-isogenous abelian varieties at least one of which is general, we show how to construct complete families of indecomposable abelian varieties whose very general fiber is isogenous to the given product and whose connected monodromy group is a product of symplectic groups or is a unitary group. As a consequence, we show how to realize any product of symplectic groups of total rank $g$ as the connected monodromy group of a complete family of $g'$-dimensional abelian varieties for any $g'\ge g$. These methods also yield a construction of a new Kodaira fibration with fiber genus $4$.